Purple Comet! Math Meet Information

The Purple Comet! Math Meet is a free, annual, international, online, team, mathematics competition designed for middle and high school students that has been held every year since 2003. Teams of from one to six students compete by submitting solutions to a list of mathematics problems. Each year there is a ten-day window during which teams may compete by choosing a start time most convenient for them. The problems range in difficulty from fairly easy to extremely challenging. In 2025 over 12,000 students participated on over 4000 teams from 80 countries.

There are two levels of competition:

• the middle school contest consists of 20 problems to be completed in 60 minutes;
• the high school contest consists of 30 problems to be completed in 90 minutes.

There are four categories of teams:

• teams whose members all attend the same large school;
• teams whose members all attend the same small school;
• teams whose members attend more than one school or are homeschooled;
• teams with no restrictions that do not compete for awards.

Here Is How It Works

• Each team is required to have an adult supervisor.
• The adult supervisor must register at the contest website.
• An adult supervisor may register as many student teams as they want.
• Registered teams may begin the contest any time during the ten-day contest window.
• During the contest, when one or more teams are ready to begin the competition, the adult supervisor will log onto the contest website and start the contest clock for each team ready to compete.
• Teams will log onto the contest website where they will be able to view contest problems and submit answers.
• During the competition students on a team work together to solve as many contest problems as they can.
• After their contest clocks have been started, middle school teams have 60 minutes to solve as many of the 20 problems as they can; high school teams have 90 minutes to solve as many of the 30 problems as they can.
• Once a team's contest clock is started, the team will be able to view the list of contest problems and begin submitting solutions to the problems.
• Printable versions of the contest problems in several languages are made available to the adult supervisors before the contest begins so they may prepare printed copies of the problems for the students to use during the contest. Students have access to printable versions of these problems once they begin the competition.
• All Purple Comet! Math Meet webpages are in English; problem translations are provided for those students who find those languages more comfortable than English.
• Student teams may keep submitting solutions to the contest problems until their allotted time has run out.
• After the end of the ten-day contest window, solutions to the contest problems and the names of winning teams will be posted on the contest website.